The MTV animation is intelligent, misanthropic and deeply relatable – and a battle cry for outcasts everywhere

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Back in the late 90s, when MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head had reached dizzying heights of sniggering virality, one of its ancillary characters – a bespectacled teenage girl named Daria – somehow got a spin-off. If Beavis and Butt-Head was Cheers, Daria was its Frasier.

“I was the only female writer at the time on Beavis and Butt-Head,” says Tracy Grandstaff, whose fantastically dry delivery brought Daria Morgandorffer to life. “We’re all sitting in the writers’ room. Because we had zero money, they’d ask me to go into the booth and voice various characters.”